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Friday, March 29, 2013

Aspen Leaves

Walk through aspen groves and listen to the wind rustling the leaves. To top it off aspen turn the most vivid colors in the fall. Entire hillsides of brilliant orange and yellow! These are some of my strongest memories of living in the Rocky Mountains. And I had a good assortment of just those colors in my stash.

For the straight line piecing assignment in our book study I chose to interpret these leaves. I had my recollections and some very old photos. But using out-of-focus or slightly faded photos allows more room for interpretation. (And my sister kindly emailed some current photos. Hooray!)

Aspen Leaves quilt

First I sketched and sketched and sketched. When the layout pleased me I enlarged it to 18 by 24 inches, the size of my sketchpad. This seemed like a reasonable size to sew.

Original Drawing for Aspen Leaves

Next I drafted a sewable pattern by overlaying a second sheet of paper and drawing with a straight-edge.

Sewable Pattern for Aspen Leaves

Now for the fun part: choosing the fabrics! In reality aspen turn from green to orange and finally yellow. But no matter how I tried, the solid yellow leaf did not look right. So I fooled with Mother Nature. Can you find the orange slice fabric?

Here's a detail of the free motion quilting. All but two pieces came from my stash. Of course, now I'm out of orange... and need more yellow, too.

These leaves speak to me Ann. Very beautiful composition and quilting! I really like how the center of your yellow leaf is green - they do turn like that sometimes. I have always wanted to plant a grove of aspens on the west side of every place we've lived, just so the leaves will cast flickering shadows in the house as the sun sets. We could not do it here because of telephone lines.

I love aspen, too, and want my sister to plant more at her house. (It's too low and warm where we live.) They sound heavenly when even the slightest breeze passes through them. I enjoy watching them turn and take photos of the leaves whenever I can. Hopefully you will have aspen on some side of your property.